Something about ghosts in the fall

I am smarter in the early- to mid-fall, so I'm waiting for that to fully kick in.  I read that scientists have found that if you want to be happy, have cool air blown up your nose.  Happy.  Warm air up your nose:  Less happy.

Also, I'm writing a new book, and I won't mention ghosts in it once, even though I already did (oops).

My mom says, "What is it with you and ghosts?"  And I say, "I don't know."  Then I say something about the early twentieth century and free-floating anxiety.  She seems to understand, or at least to understand that that's how my mind works.  We are standing in a room in a Hampton Inn in North Carolina when this conversation happens.  That's where the ghost might have been.

Later I agree to go with her to Hardee's so she can eat a biscuit and gravy and I can eat a biscuit with jam and an orange juice.  I tell her that at my previous job, I kept doing things like filling in for tenure-track faculty who would go on mysterious medical leave without telling their independent study honors students what to do.  I'm not sure anyone noticed the extra work I did, besides the students.

One time I put in a request with the department secretary to get a screen put on my office window.  I told her that a squirrel kept looking at me from the ledge and threatening to steal the lunch out of my hands.  The secretary laughed then in a way that made me feel both foolish and appreciated.  That job came with a time limit, but I miss the students, many of them.

This all seems to have to do with whether I'm secretly appreciated or haunted or not.  That's how I feel in the fall when cool air circulates through my nostrils and lungs and around my body.  Secretly appreciated.  Affably haunted.